This webinar, organised by the Grassroots unit of the Good Food Nation Lab, bears on the question of land in a Good Food Nation.
The webinar is especially intended for an audience of local Good Food Nation leads in charge of developing local plans (in local authorities and health boards), as well as for their civil society partners at the local level. We will record it and make it available as a resource on our GFN Lab website.
After a brief opening analysis by our Grassroots unit of where and how ‘land’ features in the current Good Food Nation plan, we will broaden the perspective a bit more and ask our panellists why and how land and land reform matter to food systems transformation – in general and more specifically for Scotland; and how land could be made more central to food systems transformation in Scotland, through what actions, collective mobilisations, and under what conditions?
The webinar will be chaired by Beth Cloughton (Grassroots unit, GFNL) and introduced by Isabelle Darmon (Grassroots unit, GFNL). Our panel is a mix of scholars on land and food issues as well as land policy, community land and land justice advocates (see details of the panel below).
Register nowPanellists
Adam Calo
Adam is Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance and Politics at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He writes the academic newsletter Land Food Nexus and produces the podcast Landscapes.
Josh Doble
Josh is Director of Policy and Advocacy, Community Land Scotland. Josh's role is to lead on policy advocacy and development to ensure that the benefits of community ownership and further land reform are understood at a national and regional level. He has a background in policy and research, both in government and academia, as well as in the food and drink industry.
Elise Wach
Elise is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and a community food grower in Southwest England. Her research focuses on land relations and public infrastructures for universal access to nutritious, ecologically produced food. She currently leads DISHED, a public dining project, with a focus on the possibilities for publicly sourcing local, ecological and ethically produced food.
Liz Dinnie
Liz is a sociologist in the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Department of the James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen. Her current research interests include food systems and food resilience, with particular interests in local food, small scale production, novel crops and alternative proteins. Her work spans all aspects of the food system but especially focuses on the barriers for local, small scale producers including access to land, processing, distribution and marketing.
Katherine Pollard
Kathie is Head of Policy at the Commission, leading the team responsible for policy advice, analysis and research to inform key areas of land policy. Together they provide advice to government, parliament and stakeholders. She has a background working on planning, environmental and nature finance policy working for the Scottish Government and third sector organisations. Since joining the Commission in 2018, Kathie has worked on a wide range of land reform topics including tax, vacant and derelict land and measures to address concentrated landownership.
Fraser Sugden
Fraser is an agrarian political economist based in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. He has written extensively on agrarian political economy in the context of contemporary climatic, agro-ecological, political and economic stresses. His interest in agrarian transition in Scotland is located within a more global outlook (with years of fieldwork in South and East Asia). Fraser is committed to interdisciplinary action research with strong engagement and partnership with civil society and organisations working at the grassroots.
Tara Wight
Tara is the Scotland Policy and Campaigns Coordinator for the Landworkers’ Alliance, where she works on land justice, agroecology and food sovereignty. She has a background in agricultural science research, and now works with farmers, crofters and growers across Scotland to campaign for a fairer and more sustainable food system. Her work focuses on improving access to land, supporting agroecological farming, and shaping policy to enable a just transition in food and agriculture.